BENCHMARKING THE PREPROJECT PLANNING PRACTICE FOR THE BUILDING CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN TAIWAN

Significant decisions are made by the project team during the early planning phase of capital facility project developments. The preproject planning phase begins after a decision is made to proceed with a project concept and continues until the detail design stage. Many of the industry practitioners and researchers have recognized the importance of preproject planning and that inadequate early planning is one of the key factors affecting project success. Nevertheless, the preproject planning practices vary significantly for the construction industry in Taiwan and the quality of preproject planning relies heavily on individual project team's experience. This research sets out to benchmark the preproject planning practice for the building construction industry in Taiwan. From late 2007 to early 2010, the researchers collected information from a total of 92 building construction projects using questionnaire survey. The analysis results show that the surveyed projects with better preproject planning have better cost and schedule performances on average. It is recommended that project team spend more efforts in the preproject planning stage to have a better chance of achieving project success.